Then David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech
came to meet David, trembling, and said to him, “Why are you alone,
and no one with you?” And David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The
king has charged me with a matter and said to me, ‘Let no one know
anything of the matter about which I send you, and with which I
have charged you.’ I have made an appointment with the young men
for such and such a place. Now then, what do you have on hand? Give
me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.” And the priest
answered David, “I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy
bread—if the young men have kept themselves from women.” And David
answered the priest, “Truly women have been kept from us as always
when I go on an expedition. The vessels of the young men are holy
even when it is an ordinary journey. How much more today will their
vessels be holy?” So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there
was no bread there but the bread of the Presence, which is removed
from before the LORD, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is
taken away.

  Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day,
detained before the LORD. His name was Doeg the Edomite, the chief
of Saul's herdsmen.

  Then David said to Ahimelech, “Then have you not here a spear or
a sword at hand? For I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons
with me, because the king's business required haste.” And the
priest said, “The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you struck
down in the Valley of Elah, behold, it is here wrapped in a cloth
behind the ephod. If you will take that, take it, for there is none
but that here.” And David said, “There is none like that; give it
to me.”

  And David rose and fled that day from Saul and went to Achish the
king of Gath. And the servants of Achish said to him, “Is not this
David the king of the land? Did they not sing to one another of him
in dances,

    ‘Saul has struck down his thousands,
        and David his ten thousands’?”


      And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of
Achish the king of Gath. So he changed his behavior before them and
pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors
of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard. Then Achish
said to his servants, “Behold, you see the man is mad. Why then
have you brought him to me? Do I lack madmen, that you have brought
this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence? Shall this fellow
come into my house?”

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001
by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by
permission. All rights reserved.